On a Bridge to the Past

Suppose I had not bought this house.

After all, I tried pretty hard to buy one in the town down the road. We lived there once upon a time, and I still swim in a warm bath of memories every time I slip down there. I remember how I felt sitting at this stoplight. I remember sunlight at this exact angle as I drove down Main Street before. 

We could really have done up this warm-bath-in-memories thing royally because, while we hunted for houses, what should show up in the MLS but a home we lived in before. The interior was painted all cute and somebody finally installed a dishwasher in the kitchen. Yes, it was smaller than what we’d been living in, but we were on a mission to downsize.

We didn’t take the bait.

We did, however, bid on a house two blocks away, loving its gleaming hardwood floors and granite counters. But even that proved more than I could take.

I was a different person when I last lived on those streets. I’ve figured out a few things since then and if I woke up and looked out on the same trees, I would have felt like somebody moved my Candy Land marker all the way back to Start.

In Richard Russo’s That Old Cape Magic, 57-year-old Jack Griffin grapples with his own past as he drives over the bridge to Cape Cod, on his way to a wedding.

He rode over that bridge in the back of his parents’ car every summer.

Mom and Dad attended Ivy League schools, assuming all the while that they would teach there. And if not the Ivy League, then a smaller East Coast college would do.

But they ended up in Indiana.

Snobby and lacking any talent for happiness, Mom and Dad got their East Coast fix vacationing on the Cape. Living all year for this hiatus from life’s cruel joke, they spent their week snatching up real estate magazines and snubbing anybody who tried to befriend them.

Can’t we just imagine the parental voices that play in Jack’s head? Not to mention the words that slip out of his mouth. Yes, Jack admits he inherited the worst parts of each parent.

Jack also honeymooned on the Cape. Oh, the plans he and Joy made as they holed up at their beach-side cottage in Truro thirty years ago

Today, though, they’re a little like a bookshelf. When you first set it up, the books sit up straight. They’re organized—biographies here, novels over there. How-to books up high, children’s books down low.

After awhile, Abe Lincoln gets shoved in beside Dr. Suess. They both slouch. They wear a coat of dust. Somebody needs to tidy this place up, but nobody wants to.

Yeah, that’s where Jack and Joy’s marriage is these days.

So Cape definitely launches on a gloomy note.

But it’s not all hopeless, I promise.

And Joy’s twin baby brothers definitely liven things up. These two Marine-Corps oafs ache for somebody, anybody, to insult them, because there’s nothing they love better than to throw a punch.

Language cow patties. 

 If you need something to pull you through Jack’s midlife taking-stock, you might whip up some Simple Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wraps. With a little bit of honey hiding in both the spread and the chicken, this dish earned a lot of love from me.

The Romance Atheist

Amazon readers warned me about Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.  "Huge, tough book. . . . very clearly a masterpiece."     "Talking dog. . . . Mid 18-century prose style."

I mean, the size alone:

 

Sheesh!  Eight-hundred or so pages!

I dug in anyway. I found it delightful, got right into the pirate-era lingo, had no trouble "hearing" the two famous surveyors joking with each other.

At least until page 18 or so, when the talking dog entered at stage left.

And I couldn't do it anymore.

So, what else is out there?  

Well, since I've dipped my toe into the self-publishing ocean, maybe I should take a look at who else might be swimming around, particularly those paddling in my same little cove, the bay of LDS fiction.

I found a string of possibly delightful offerings and saved them to my wish list.

First try goes to The Husband Maker by Karey White.

Before we look closer at White's book, let me clear up a thing or two  This book is a romance. I can no more write a romance than I can sing a solo, which is to say that if I tried, people would beg me to stop, please, you're hurting us..

I couldn't come up with a Love Interest. Romance books are liberally supplied with men pretty enough to make your palms sweat and your mouth say inane things. Rich enough to buy their own islands. Interested enough to ignore entire sororities dressed in short shorts while you make up your mind whether you want them around or not.

Oh, and available.

Has anyone ever seen this creature?

Me neither.

And if I cannot see it with my own eyes, hear it with my own ears, I cannot believe in this . . . this being who dwells somewhere out there in the ether, and makes the earth move. Which makes me, I guess, a romance atheist. 

Not that books full of impossible characters can't get themselves sold. Weren't we just discussing a talking dog?  And don't we know that books full of wizards, vampires and aliens fly off the shelves? 

But in the end, all fiction is, um, unreal, right?

So I swallowed my prejudices and opened White's book and met Charlotte, a mid-twenties graphic designer in San Francisco.  White gave her some adorable flaws.  The girl snorts when she laughs. She's 5'11".  We all know it's hard to find a good man, but Dear Charlotte's got it even tougher, because she'd like to find one that towers over her.

Back in high school, one prom date was four inches shorter. When the photographer lined up all the couples for pictures, he switched Charlotte to the back row with the boys, and the date to the front, humiliating two teenagers in one fell swoop.

Anyway, everybody she dates marries the next girl they find after they break up with Charlotte. People are starting to talk about her little jinx.

Into Charlotte's life comes Kyle--rich, handsome, attentive and available. But somebody named Angus hangs around a lot, too. He's known Charlotte since high school, never dated her but witnessed all her awkward proms.

I'm only part way through Husband Maker, but strongly suspect that Angus is meant to be more than just Charlotte's guy-confidante. I will have to let you know.

White's easy humor greases the gears of this story, even if she tosses in a few too many stories of Charlotte's long-ago dates, the ones before the jinx took hold.

Husband Maker never calls anybody LDS, but Kyle and Charlotte definitely dwell outside the hook-up culture, even though they live in the age of iPhones and Pinterest. They go on planned dates, like a cheese-making adventure, which might be even more datey than real LDS kids manage to do these days.

Hopefully Charlotte will find the right guy, settle down and fix wonderful dinners like Chicken Pineapple Stir-Fry.

This might be my favorite stir-fry. The tasty secret is--ketchup! Bye-bye Nesquik really doesn't need fancy sauces to be happy.

Who Ruined Halloween?

I have awesome weather powers.

Some days I get a longing for a one of my favorite creamy soups. Nah, the weather's too warm, I think. But I defiantly write it on the menu for, say, Tuesday, and by Tuesday, a cold rain blows through town and everybody is glad to sit down to soup.

A little soup weather on Halloween this year would have been welcome. What we got instead was pure nastiness. We got the kind of wind that crawls down your neck and makes you sorry you have to walk across the Kroger parking lot. We got little trick-or-treaters, their arms shaking as they stood on the doorstep, holding out their open pillow cases. We got their little faces pinched up with misery. We got a battle with the storm door, the wind shoving it against us while we serviced the brave and determined hordes that wanted their candy. 

I might be to blame for this unwelcome blast of January-in-October. Perhaps I brought it on by reading Alice Munro's short story collection, Too Much Happiness.  She sets her tales in her native Canada. So while I innocently read about somebody named Joyce driving home from work through falling snow and lashing rain, or somebody named Roy getting stuck in the woods while the snow covers his tracks, storm clouds gathered over Bye-Bye Nesquik's neighborhood and spoiled the evening of a few hundred Power Rangers, Ellas and zombies.

I apologize.

But Munro is the Meryl Streep of short-story writing. Nearly everything she creates possesses a truffle-like perfection. She makes it look easy when it most certainly is not.

Her characters ride a bus to visit somebody in prison, or share a dorm room with someone of mysterious means, or hide from the outcast that wants to be their friend. They are quiet, often bookish people, who watch bolder types get away with things.

However in one story--I won't give away which--one of these quiet ones strikes back.

It reminds me of the instructions I once read in a tourist guide: cities have muggers, it said. The smart thing to do is carry a mugger wallet. Your real wallet holds your wad of cash, your complete deck of credit cards. The mugger wallet contains ten dollar bill, and maybe one of those fake paper cards, just as a nice touch.

The mugger approaches. You take out your mugger wallet, throw it hard and far, then run fast in the opposite direction. I have no idea if this works, but it was comforting to pack it along, even if it could cost me ten bucks.

Anyway, Munro's character, the one I won't give away, sticks up for him/herself with a mugger-wallet mentality.

Book contains one lengthy cow patty.

I'll be done with Munro's collection tomorrow and then maybe this unseasonable weather will ease up.

As a failsafe, I added Taco Crescent Bake to the menu, a yummy supper dish that goes great with a crisp fall evening, do you hear me, o weather gods?  No need to deliver us a stinging, howling, Arctic whiteout.

Coming Soon!

Dear Bye-Bye Nesquik readers,

We pause our regular programming just long enough for me to seize the spotlight for a minute. And we have some business to conduct.

Item 1: I wrote a book. Never mind how long it took me, but here we are today, just about ready to foist this thing on the public.  Here's how it will look on Amazon when it comes out on November 7th:

"Welcome to the world of the Runyons and the Feldsteds, two Mormon families in 1970s Maryland. Far from their Western American roots, they cling to each other like exiles clutching a precious box of topsoil from the old country.

"In The Boxford Stories you will meet Ada Runyon who always turns to Ruthalin Feldsted when she needs an ear—sharing her deepest confidences, her everyday musings, and her bits of horrified gossip. Yet Ada dies inside whenever Ruthalin’s country-cousin manners poke out in public.

"Latham Runyon, a history professor, and Erval Feldsted, a hospital engineer, bond every Sunday night over gooey desserts and vigorous religious discussion, a game their children call Stump the Rabbi. Underneath their balding heads and graying temples, each man desperately seeks a sign that God would choose him as a buddy.

"The Feldsted and Runyon children, running breathlessly through each other’s houses and backyards, have long considered each other substitute cousins. However, Ginni Runyon plots to change herself from the girl next door to the girl Marc Feldsted can’t live without.

"And when Boxford’s Mormons mix with the rest of the town, everybody could use a field guide to the other species.

"Laugh, cry, and shake your head with the Runyons and Feldsteds as they make their way through the decade that brought us leisure suits and urban decay."

Item 2:  I'm offering you a little freebie.  Starting October 27th, Bye-Bye Nesquik will post daily installments of "'Atta Boy," one of the stories in this book. Get your reading fix, Monday through Friday that week.

Item 3: Sometime in November, Bye-Bye Nesquik moves to the official author website, www.kristencarsonauthor.com.  I will let you know when we make the jump, but if you still land here after the move, we will find a way to get you there.

I may make other changes, new name maybe, but I still plan to talk about books and recipes.

Meanwhile, dine on this yummy APRICOT SALSA CHICKEN:

Good-Bye Plan A

I listened to a lot of southern accent this week.  So I had no trouble hearing John Grisham's Ford County characters in my head.

Ford County is a short story collection, heavy on lawyers because, as I think we all know, Grisham was one before he made it big in book world.

His tales, set in Clanton, Mississippi, introduce us to a disgruntled plaintiff, to an unambitious lawyer who wants to chuck it all, and more.  In a story that still leaves me smiling, the biggest hustler in the county matches wits with the blandest man in town. And then there's the cigarette-puffing family that piles into a van to visit little brother in jail.  Little brother has been busy behind bars, working on his literary career, his music career and his exoneration.

Just think how much poorer the world would be if John Grisham's Plan A (Be a baseball player!) had worked out.

Speaking of foiled Plan A's, the woman who submitted the following recipe to Taste of Home said she aimed to make a chicken caesar salad but looked in the freezer and found herself short on chicken. So she got creative and threw together:

 CHICKEN NUGGET CAESAR SALAD

I improvised on it myself, since I was missing a few supplies today.  I baked 4 Tyson's chicken patties, divided a Caesar salad kit between my husband and myself and served the cut up patties on top.  That takes the calorie count up to 605.

Added King's Hawaiian rolls. And we were happy.

What Keeps Us Up at Night

Like turning down the wrong hallway in a bad dream, I opened a book that tossed me right back into my sophomore year.

Joan Bauer's Peeled follows an eager reporter at the high school newspaper who investigates the threatening signs that appear at the town's haunted house. Our girl reporter wants to get the story before the town newspaper breaks it, yet no one takes her seriously.  (Honey, it's because you write for the high school paper.)

The town's claim to fame is growing apples.

I'm not sure how this story ended up on my list, because I get my book hints from sneering hipsters. Every title takes years to work itself up to the top of my list and, by then, I simply have no idea where I ran on to it.

I can't speak for the rest of Peeled, but from what I read, the author missed no chances to toss in an apple pun, or an apple place name.  In any case, I need to get this thing back to the library post-haste, where it can be found by some young, eager reader who will appreciate it more than I did.

In its place, I picked up Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder.

The fist you're looking at is painted like the flag of Burundi, one of the least fortunate countries in the world.  It's right next door to Rwanda, if that tells you anything.


In Strength, a young man named Deogratias arrives in New York City from war-torn Burundi and begins to make a living delivering groceries. If I had met him, I would have mistaken him for a lowly cowherder, completely missing the fact that he once attended medical school. Not only that, but an emaciated cowherder whose pants can barely hang on to his sunken hips.

People who knew Burundi wondered how he managed to make it out of that hellish country. All I will say is that story includes a lot of fleeing the by the dark of night and a lot of stepping over dead bodies. As you might guess, Deogratias hates to go to sleep. The nightmares that wake him up--oh my!

How does one make sense of so much evil in the world? people ask. "But look at all the good," Deogratias tells them.  Look at all the small miracles that helped him along the way--the remarkable woman at the Burundi/Rwanda border whose cool stealth saved him from getting herded into yet another massacre, or the former nun in New York who placed call after call until she secured him a place to live and a chance to resume his education.

Kidder reigns as the master of nonfiction. If I were you, I would not miss some of his other highly engaging books, such as Hometown and House.  Everybody has a story and Kidder is the man who hangs out and takes notes until he can discern the central drama of his subjects' lives.

Now, just in case your own life takes a bad turn, you might want to pick up 100-Day Pantry by Jan Jackson and try a few of her ideas.

Jackson offers up 100 recipes that can be cooked with shelf-stable foods.  You can cook the everyday versions--using fresh onions, celery and peppers.  If you like one dish, stock up on the canned and dehydrated ingredients, then thumb your nose at ice storms, unemployment and whatever else bolts you awake at night.  Go at it full tilt, stocking up for each recipe and you have--ta-da!--a 100-day pantry full of potential comfort food. 

Every few weeks, I've slipped some of Jackson's dishes right under the noses of my handy subjects who may or may not suspect what I'm up to.   So far, the score is 3 yeps and 1 nope.  This one was surprisingly good:

MANY-VEGGIE BEEF STEW
(everyday version)

2 (12-oz.) cans roast beef with gravy
1 (15 oz.) can green beans
1 (15 oz.) can corn
1 (15 oz.) can peas
2 (15 oz.) cans carrots
2 (15 oz.) cans diced potatoes
1 (10 oz.) can tomato soup
1 (10 oz.) can cream of celery soup
1 (10 oz.) can cream of mushroom soup
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp.salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

Do not drain cans. Mix all ingredients together in pot and heat through.  (My goodness, what laborious cooking this is!)  Makes 12 servings @ 190 calories each.

Consult Jackson's book on ingredient substitutions for the emergency version.


Photo Credits

Down the Bloodline

We finish Bryan Burrough's Big Rich with tales of the great oilmen's posterity. As you might guess, the children of the rich can range anywhere from responsible and handsome fellows who grow the business and get invited to join the best clubs in Dallas, to cocaine-snorting ne'er-do-wells who own great football teams and attend cheerleader tryouts for all the wrong reasons.

My own brush with oil heirs was my first job out of college. Some library I had never heard of offered me a job.  They were attached to Southern Methodist University, but they weren't the main library where students crammed for finals, or where you hunted down a novel, took it home and stayed up all night with it.

No, this was a Special Collections library.  In Special Collections, the books never leave the building.  Professors, writers, researchers come to these temples of knowledge and scribble notes from the books therein, filling up on material for their own books.   Burrough himself probably sat in a few of these research libraries.

"Special" means the library concentrates on a narrow band of knowledge, say Great Lakes history, or history of labor unions.  My library at SMU had its beginnings as the personal collection of Mr.D., an oilman I had never heard of in my life, and his pet subject was Western Americana.

As a side note, all his books about the settling of the West, the water issues of the West, ad infinitum, would not be complete without including some of the big players in the region which means the Mormons. We dusted and tended a good deal of shelf space given over Joseph Smith and everything that came after him.  And deep in the temperature-controlled vault, where they kept the really valuable stuff, we stored original editions of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, which we were never to handle without first donning cotton gloves.

Anyway, the original collection was in Mr. D's home.  He willed it to the university upon his death. Perhaps it was was Mr. D's money that built the building, too. Now, my job was just a job, but walking into that building, entering a vast hall of fossilized limestone and walking up the forty or so steps to the hushed confines of library-ness, left me awestruck every day.

Mr. D was such an obscure oilman that I never expected to run across him in Burrough's book.  But there he was on page 152, playing a walk-on role. In the postwar years, Texas was the king of oil the world over. Then rumors popped up about the Mideast and what just might lie under all that desert sand.  A top Roosevelt aide chose Mr. D to cross the world and camp out with the Bedouins. His top-secret mission: investigate the rumors; see if American companies could get a piece of the action.

Evidently, he survived the mission.

But back to his library. Mr. D's son, Mr. D the Second, also added his hobby collection: railroad history.  In addition to books, we kept file drawers of his train pictures.  To my eye, each one was indistinguishable from the next. But train buffs the world over knew that if they wanted really good stuff, we were the library to track down.

Then there was Mr. D the Third.  He was still a young man when I worked there, a student at library school. His contribution was to come in every so often and sort train pictures.  One day, he hinted that when he finished library school, he would no longer be willing to work gratis. I'll never know if Mr. D the Third achieved this professional status. All I know is that he was in his fifth year of study, and library school is only two years long.

So, as far as the D bloodline was concerned, they landed somewhere between solid billionaire status and losing it all to cocaine and cheerleaders.

And we will now celebrate the end of oilman stories with a nice bit of:

PORK & BEEF BARBECUE

Finding the Next Best Thing

I wish I had kept count of the miles I have walked this summer.  We have got to be talking over five hundred.  

And oh, the things I see!  The neighborhoods I want to move into! I used to suffer from house envy, but now I've calmed down to mere neighborhood envy. 

Then again, if I picked up and moved, I would have to give up something I love, something I have never had before and will never find again--the view out my kitchen window:

It is all curved lines, and people-watching.  I can see the main boulevard through the neighborhood.  I can see the walking paths, and everybody strolling, biking or hauling their children in little red wagons.  

Up until Thursday, this wonderful view was marred by a window like this:

That middle bar sat right at eye level.  I either had to stretch or slouch to look out on all the backyard beauty.

But, all fixed now.  New window.  Thank you, Mr. Nesquik.

Of course, if I had a bathtub full of money like the folks Bryan Burrough writes about in Big Rich, I could keep the view from my kitchen window and add, oh, seven more kitchen windows, hopping from one to the other in my fleet of private planes.

In other words, I have advanced from the chapters where the tycoons discover the oil, to the part where they figure how to spend all the moola.

When we lived in Texas, my husband once sat on a plane and listened to a woman from Lubbock, "just flyin' to Dallas to get mah hair done."

With that kind of money, you don't have to choose whether to buy yourself a ranch in Montana or in Mexico.  Just buy both.   

Of course, when you move up into this league, you acquire a whole new set of problems.  One of Burrough's chapters begins with this gem somebody overheard one day in Houston: "It's been a hard day all around.  First, my wife's pet kangaroo has to go and get poisoned, and then somebody stole my midget butler's stepladder."

Back in this heyday, oilmen liked to own a few airplanes but didn't much care about buying yachts.  What cruises they took, they complained about all the wine, preferring, instead, more bourbon, more "barbecue, greens and black-eyed peas." 

Little wonder old money looked on and called these people "Texicanus vulgaris."  But who cared what old money thought?  Texans just went on throwing parties where champagne flowed out of miniature oil derricks.

In my Dallas days, I was the ward organist, just like now, and I had no car.  I had to walk to the church every Saturday, which meant meandering through Highland Park and University Park, two millionaire enclave cities surrounded by Dallas itself.  Oh, the pink marble mansions!  The broad circular driveways!  The magnolia trees and azalea bushes, everything professionally tended!  The gleaming Mercedes, Beemers and Porsches!

I could've taken dozens of different routes through this wonderland, and I aimed to try them all, no matter now hot those Texas afternoons got.  I mean, I was already hooked on walking before I arrived, but the Park Cities were like smoking walker crack. 


My walks these days are probably about finding the next best thing to Highland Park.  Pockets of loveliness abound out there.  I see beautifully terraced backyards, perfect for entertaining all one's friends.  And I covet.  I see streets where everybody can walk to the library, the grocery store and the ice cream parlor.  And I covet.  I see houses convened around darling little parks with pretty benches and paths.  And I covet.

But if I traded what I have for what I don't, there goes my perfect kitchen window, with its inimitable view.

So that's where I'll be, inside my kitchen, looking out.

Oh, and cooking things.  This week, we get:

TURKEY 'N SWISS CALZONES

One reviewer said the filling was a little bland, and I agree.  She suggested using a sharper cheese.  I thought about adding more salt to the dough.

Almost Ravinia

Perhaps you've heard of Ravinia, the summer music venue in Chicago's North Shore suburbs.

It consists of four important elements.

1)  Music.  An orchestra plays.  What do they play?  It doesn't matter, especially if you sit in the cheap seats, i.e. the lawn.  To experience it more as background music and less like college-class appreciative listening is OK with me.

2)  The beauty of nature.  That would be the lawn, as I just mentioned, with its surrounding forest.  You could a film a movie of lords and ladies, bows, arrows and chain mail on Ravinia's grounds and probably get away with it.

3) People-watching.  Ok, no bows, arrows or chain mail showed up during my one time there.  But I'm quite sure the people parading past me and my folding chair were the lords of finance and the ladies of sorority life, people that were as accustomed to beauty and culture as I am accustomed to the aisles of Wal-Mart.  Yes, I was a tad bit out of my element.  But I paid the ticket price (the cheap lawn tickets), therefore I belonged.

4) Food.  We did the box dinner.  The sandwich was on thick artisan bread.  The brownie was solid as a brick, yet still chewable.  Stuffed with chocolate chips.  My, oh my, oh, my, what a brownie it was!  It was the kind of brownie that, when I finished, I looked over at my husband and hoped he couldn't finish his.  Too much for you?  Need any help with that?  

Sadly, my summer has not included any Ravinia.

So I did the next best thing, Indy's own Symphony on the Prairie.  This time, I packed the dinner.  I could hardly wait to get settled on the lawn and bite into Rice Krispie treats, watermelon and:

TURKEY SANDWICH WITH CRANBERRY SAUCE

The only spoiler to this sandwich experience was the October-like chill out there on the prairie.  I shivered through the music.  Lots of other music-lovers had the smarts to wear long pants and closed shoes.  I seem to have a problem imagining warm days turning into cool nights.  

Another small problem with this delicious sandwich:  I opened a can of cranberry sauce, used a little bit and wonder what to do with the rest of the stuff.   So I tried:

CRANBERRY SAUCE CHICKEN

Over on the Book Pile, I'm still working through Julia Glass' Three Junes.  I mentioned the Brits on vacation?  Actually, the story focuses on Paul--newspaper publisher, Scottish, widowed.  Switching  between his sight-seeing in Greece and flashbacks of his marriage, we learn that his wife seemed awfully devoted to her collie-breeding business.  Or maybe she was devoted to something or someone else?

Moving on the second June, Paul has now died.  His three sons gather for the memorial service.   We get the story from the oldest son, a gay man who chose America over family closeness.  Again, the story alternates between flashbacks of his life back in New York, where all his friends grow more emaciated with AIDS, and the "now," as the bereaved gather to remember Dad and wonder about Mom.  Then one member of the family asks somebody for a big favor.  And I mean, a BIG favor. 

I haven't gotten to the third June yet.

It's a pleasant but slow-moving story.   It's got some big cow patties, but I could see 'em coming and I flipped the page.  

Half Marathons for the Untrained

I must have needed the nap.

We are not morning church people this year.  We get the pleasures of sleeping in versus the pleasures of the Sunday afternoon nap.  When we arrive home, all we want to do is eat.  Bye-Bye Nesquik, if she wishes to be loved by all, had best start frying up the sausages and hunting down the measuring spoons.

But today, Bye-Bye Nesquik sat on her bed, sinking further and further down until she gave in completely.  

Little wonder.

I'm used to walking, a lot.  I can do ten miles at a stretch and still be cheerful (probably because I promise myself a Butterfinger Blizzard when I'm done).  But Friday, I decided to go for twelve miles.

Packing along extra snacks and cold water, I set out.  There was the shady park, where bikers and runners blasted past me.  There was the remote path where, on my right, I could peek through the fence at the cars speeding by on the freeway and, on the left, I saw a backlot full of old bus shelters.  There was a little restaurant row in a neighborhood that is fighting its way back from neglect.  (It's 75% there.  Keep trying.)  Then there was the nice part of town where the day spas and the art galleries lead the way into hushed neighborhoods with beautiful landscaping.

All the way along the route, I worried that I couldn't finish.  One shoe hurt. Not to mention that I was all too aware that if I turned right at the private high school campus instead of turning left, I could cheat my way back to my car sooner.

But  I didn't cheat.  And I'm glad, because it would have been sad to miss the really nice street with the tree-lined promenade down the middle.

But it was work all the way.  Twelve miles, as my daughter tells me, is just short of a half marathon.  I'm not doin' it again unless I get a picnic and a nap somewhere in the middle.  

So who's surprised that I conked out today?

However, everybody got fed.  Kinda late, but it happened.

Our Fast Sunday tradition around here is to try all new recipes:

CHICAGO-STYLE PIZZA

FROZEN BUTTERFINGER PIE

Over on the Book Pile, we're attempting Toni Morrison's A Mercy.  Ms. Morrison deserves to sit at the right hand of the masterful William Faulkner.

Trouble is, I can't abide Faulkner.

Ms. Morrison's story jerks forward and backward.  I would like to like this book, but with all its artful ambiguity, I cannot keep everybody straight.  Now, who's on the farm?  Who is the mistress of all this?  Who's pregnant?  Who lost a baby? 

Does she think readers lock themselves away in a lonely cabin, wholly absorbed, stopping only to brew a cup of tea or stand on the deck and gaze out over the valley?  I myself squeeze in a few pages after adding up last month's receipts, and a few more sitting in the food court at the mall, and a few more while waiting for my grandson to punch and kick his way through karate class.  Every reading session feels like I'm opening an entirely new book.  It doesn't help that the horse is named Regina and the people are named Sorrow and Patrician, unless I am missing some five-star symbolism here.

I read on, pretty much lost.  I shouldn't have to work this hard.

Although if Ms. Morrison can find me a lonely cabin with a scenic back deck, I will really buckle down on this thing.  

On Lab Rats

Our lesson this week is:  give the author a chance.

When I opened M. T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing and read the first pages, I wasn't planning to stick with this story of a strangely grown-up-sounding boy surrounded by scholars.  They drill him in Greek and Latin and violin lessons.  They weigh everything he consumes, then weigh again when he excretes.  They exact capricious punishments when he answers a question wrong. 

But young Octavian grew on me.  He and his mother were captured in Africa.  She was royalty.  He has no memory of the old continent.  And now they are essentially lab rats at the Novanglian College of Lucidity.  Well, privileged lab rats.  When the college throws a soiree, the mother acts the hostess.  She's royalty, after all, a shimmering beauty with whom every man would like to converse.   

When the benefactor of the institute dies, a rich young lord from England arrives to examine the premises with a mind to sponsoring these scholars.  He strikes up a flirtation with Octavian's mother and makes her an offer--with a boatload of catches. 

This is Boston, just before the American Revolution.  The colonists' rumble with discontent.  Oh, and fear, too.  They suspect the British may foment a slaves' uprising, whence masters' throats will be slit as they sleep soundly in their beds.

So, no more Greek and Latin for Octavian.  He might get too smart.

Then there is the Pox Party.  Whether for the cause of pure science, or to keep war and soldiers at arms' length, the scientists sequester themselves with a few friends (and their slaves), infect them with a "mild" strain of smallpox, promising to nurse them through it with every modern remedy at their disposal.  This, we are told, is far preferable to getting one's smallpox epidemic-style. They can all play whist and stage evening music salons while they break out in pustules together.

I won't give away any more.

Anyway, for a book that held all the promise of a financial statement, the story sure picked up.


Neither did it hurt to read it while I sat on a fine bench in the town square of one of those charming suburbs that I love so much.  The "village" was having sidewalk sales that day and the streets were full of slim ladies in their yoga pants, shopping bags swinging from their arms as they tried on shirts, or strode past the granite walls of the bank building.  Children played in decorative tufts of prairie grass.  Stroller wheels clattered on the sidewalk bricks.  A couple commuter trains clanged by.  And cicadas sang.

Every town should be like this.  We especially need a version where we don't all have to spend a million or so to buy a house there.

Now that I'm back to ordinary life, operating the ByeByeNesquik College of Recipe Experimentation, it's looks like the lab rats are in for a week of sandwiches.  The fanciest one is BROCCOLI HAM RING.

The Cobb Salad of Books

I would just like to know how many Post-It Notes littered Michael Connelly's walls as he worked out the plot to The Brass Verdict. 

We introduced the hero, Mickey Haller, last week.   Remember the man doing all the lawyer homework?  Yes, well, as his movie producer case proceeds to trial, the reader may want to take few notes, just to keep track of the bribes and the double agents and the grainy photos of people with possibly fake mustaches and maybe even the detective that brings Mickey these photos and acts as if he's protecting Mickey from all the murders going around.

I don't know whether to admire an author that can assemble such a Mexican train of surprises, or worry that he has counted up all the plot twists in his competitors' books and vowed to outdo them.

The result is a lot of action swirling around people I didn't care a whole lot about.  But if gets you through a plane ride, well, job security for Mr. Connelly. 

The tossed-in feel of Brass Verdict isn't so much different than what we ate this week.  Some lady in Iowa took a simple piece of chicken and kept adding things.  When you do something like that, how do you know when to stop?  All I know is, I liked it better this week than the first time I fixed it.

MONTEREY BARBECUED CHICKEN

After eating this delicious chicken, I opened the microwave the next day and found the bacon still sitting on its greasy paper towel.  

I wonder if Mr. Connelly found a few Post-It Notes he forgot to use in his book. 

Elbowing Past Do-Re-Mi

How clever, describing a birth from the point of view of the person birthed.  That's how Edward St. Aubyn launches Mother's Milk.

Little Robert remembers the heartache of separation from his mother.  The world outside is bright and garish.   He had thought it would be like a big ocean, as comfy and warm as the nest from which he just came. He might rather go back to that nest, except that getting out of it was such a violent experience.

St. Aubyn hooked me right away, but now our birthed boy has got himself a little brother who just lays there absorbing all of Mummy and Daddy's attention.  So Robert works hard at being funny, doing things like mimicking the self-important nursemaid, just to regain all that parental attention.

It's charming, but I don't know what to make of it all.  Will we find out that the witty father is a ne'r-do-well, something like Emma Thompson's Daddy in Saving Mr. Banks?  And there's no heft to this thing, since I'm reading it on Kindle.  I can't tell how much longer the journey is, in spite of the little fine-print hints that show at the bottom of the page.

Actually, it's a four-book package, The Patrick Melrose Novels.  Mother's Milk is the last of the bunch. 

Other Amazon buyers tell me that they lost much-needed sleep because they couldn't pull away from Melrose.  Now that they have finished all four books, saying good-bye to the characters rips out the hearts of these readers.  The stories aren't for the faint-hearted, they say, but so, so worth it.

I guess I need to go back to the beginning link in this chain of stories.  After all, do we hop on airplanes while they cruise a mile above the air?  Do we elbow past Do-Re-Mi, the better to get on with Fa-So-La?  Do we start raising kids from age 14?

And yes, I gave up on Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables.  The charcoal illustration on the front cover was, I presume, Hawthorne's face.  His eyes taunted me every time I walked by.  Are you not woman enough to find meaning in my classic tale?    

Guess not. 

And did I give the book a little extra shove when I dropped it in the library's return bin?  Kinda.  I can't have a blog about books and tell readers, week after week, "I choked down four more pages this week.  Please stick with me while I bore you as much as Mr. Wordy-Books bores me."

I swallowed my Hawthorne guilt with a serving of:

Italian Bow Tie Bake

Even our preschool picky eater ate this.  The little guy was thrilled that we finally let him have a table knife, and he set about cutting up the bow ties and chowing them down. 

The Scent of Spring

I am pretty sure winter is over and done because when I go out on my walks, I get hungry.  Ah, the sight of neighbor men standing on their back deck, poking at whatever smokes on the grill, then slapping the lid shut!  Ah, the scent of charbroiled meat floating in the air!  And meat is not even something I crave.

Well, I do, when I'm out walking.    

Mr. Nesquik talked me into visiting one of those shops where we buy half the cow.  I was prepared to part with some significant money, but we came out with about three steaks.  Oh, believe me, we still spent a frightening amount because this particular shop is all about organic.  

The steaks sit like buried treasure in the freezer, and I feel a sense of awe every time I see them reposing next to the stone-cold blueberry bagels.  I don't think I should let Mr. Nesquik cook them unless it's an occasion. 

And how will we know if the organic version, all grass-fed and everything, actually tastes better than the normal steaks from our local Kroger?  Any hunk of meat tastes delicious when we soak it in:

All-Seasons Marinade 

As for reading material, I'm about to give up on Kate Atkinson's Case Histories. She starts with three rather captivating crimes, all occurring years apart from each other.  Each case ends up in the lap of a sad-sack British private eye.  I have been promised that "startling connections and discoveries" will emerge, but if these workaday Brits don't quit filling the pages with little ponderments on the Latin root of this word and that, I'm never going to make it to whatever it is in here that "positively sparkles with . . . constant page-turning delight."   Much less, all those "startling connections and discoveries."

I will sit down with Atkinson once or twice more.  If I find myself wanting to go gaze at those steaks instead of turning the pages of her book, that's it, she's gone. 

Too Much of a Good Thing

Somebody I know just came into wealth of black beans.  Asked to provide nine cans for a church dinner, she dutifully poured them into her crock-pot and delivered the goods.

No one ate a single bean.  Which leaves her with too much of a good thing. 

In an effort to help her deal with this misfortune, I offer:

Soft Chicken Tacos  

Ms. Many-Beans has also requested Bye-Bye Nesquik's official chocolate chip cookie recipe.  You know, the one from the cookbook page well-spattered with decades' worth of butter and vanilla.  So, thanks to the Betty Crocker cookbook (whatever edition was on the shelves when Bye-Bye Nesquik established her household), here you go:

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar 

2/3 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup shortening

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

3 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 package (12 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375'.  Mix sugars, butter, shortening, egg and vanilla.  Stir in remaining ingredients.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake until light brown, 8 to 10 minutes.  Cool slightly before removing from cookie sheet.  Total recipe = 6740 calories.  

Bye-bye Nesquik's cookie secret is to bake them until they're barely set, then let them sit on the sheets until they flatten.  This makes for a cookie whose middle is on the chewy side of underbaked.

So, seeing as how the rising generation of cooks gets all its recipes from the web, do they spatter the butter and vanilla all over their computer screens?  If so, I assume they clean it off.  But when they die, how will their children ever know, Yep, this is the official birthday cake Mom always made for Dad?

I have still not finished Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance.  Hawthorne is, no doubt, one of our High Priests of Literature.  But sometimes all those words are, like nine cans of beans in a crock-pot, more than what anybody can use up.  I find myself attempting to translate his prose into the speech of the T-shirt-and-jeans era.  It's a time-consuming way to read, let me tell you.

But let's try it, just for fun:

“Why are you so secret in your operations?” I asked.  “God forbid that I should accuse you of intentional wrong; but the besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity.  His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men.  At some point of his course—he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience.  O, my dear friend, beware this error!  If you meditate the overthrow of this establishment, call together our companions, state your design, support it with all your eloquence, but allow them an opportunity of defending themselves.”  -          N. Hawthorne

“What have you got to hide?” I asked.  “Not that I’m judging, but it looks to me like most do-gooders start to think their ends justify the means.  Pretty soon, they're cutting corners.   Look, buddy, don’t try it.  If you’ve got plans to turn the farm into some halfway-house, don’t be a sneak about it.  At least ask the rest of us what we think.” -          B-B. Nesquik

Phew!  What an effort.  I wonder what would take longer -- eating up all the beans, or translating the remaining 250 pages.